In the Japanese army, “ant soldiers” were those fighting men, many of them drafted, who performed the lowest and dirtiest jobs of war. Some of them were ordered to fight in China for years after World War II “ended” in August 1945, often ending up in POW camps or dying. Waichi Okumura was one of them, not returning home until 1954. Now 80, he insists on clearing the record with the Japanese government, which claims that these soldiers were not ordered to fight in China, but volunteered instead. Okumura returns to the killing fields in Shanxi Province and meets some of his former enemies. As he slogs through the state’s bureaucracy, what is poignantly and powerfully portrayed is the moral conviction of a man who was abandoned by his country after he had been taught to kill for it.  TWH